


Only Yesterday

by SouthernBird



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: F/M, Family, Female!Shiro, Fluff, Future Fic, Gen, Genderbend, Happy Ending, Home, Lance is a stay at home dad, Love, Married Life, Past Lives, Past Torture, Shance Fluff Week, True Love, Tsukiko Shirogane
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-10
Updated: 2017-06-10
Packaged: 2018-11-12 14:23:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11163696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SouthernBird/pseuds/SouthernBird
Summary: Tsukiko Shirogane comes home from a long day of working a career that lacks of flying space lions and fighting evil Empires with a box of desserts to surprise her husband and their daughter. Instead of laughter and singing, she walks in to find a bit of an unexpected sight for the late afternoon.--Shance Fluff Week | Home/Family & Past/Future | Female!Shiro AU





	Only Yesterday

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this piece because of a recent Fem!Shiro AU I kind of came up on the fly and rambled about on Twitter for a good three days. It was refreshing to give her a voice and a happy ending that any version of Shiro deserves especially on the birthday of Voltron!

In the past, home was a sleepy apartment complex in Seattle, a cozy abode where she woke in the gray dawns to find her parents speaking in soft timbers over a brewing pot of coffee while her younger twin siblings attempted to sleep the day away. There, she was happy, never having to worry about how loved she was by her family while regrettably assisting her mother in the culinary arts before being shooed away to help with whatever her father may be doing for the sake of having an edible dinner. 

In another past, home was the Garrison barracks, a success in itself from her laborious hours slaving over textbooks and training simulations in her hometown high school’s computer labs. She was happy there also, but in a sense that she felt a sense of accomplishment that heightened her shoulders, broadened her stance whenever her name was called in introduction to a class or to an auditorium of new cadets. 

But, a darker past is a cell of a Galra prison ship, a horrifying moment that spans for too long, longer than she can remember and could not even if she wanted to for the cracks on her mind run deep and ragged, still scarred over from what she did to others, how cleanly her scythe-like sword would cut into the husk of an alien combatant or how sick the crack of anatomy sounded under the heel of her foot. 

If she were to look too close into the fractured mirror of her own self, she would see the glimpses of memories of what was done to her instead of the events that stained her own hands with the blood of other innocents, would see the atrocities that she endured in the labs of Galra druids and in the rooms of certain Generals… 

_No_. No, not on this day, not when she holds in her hands a box of freshly baked lemon bars, the hint of citrus tingling at her nose in a delightfully bright way as she gently nudges the door open to the little two bedroom apartment in a city that she randomly picked on the map, far away from any fragments of her pasts. 

Granted, their friends still come around. Hunk could not bear being too far away from the little ones, so he found a job in a swank restaurant that bustled his creativity and permitted him sending extras home with his favorite patrons and best friends. Pidge, who went back to the Garrison with her father and brother, will come in unexpectedly every time, never once picking up a phone to send a simple ‘coming by’ text to at least allow them a second to clean up the toys and the dishes. 

Keith is just the same, but he holds no fuss when he steps into an apartment that is in complete disarray because a toddler has decided to try and flush her toys down the toilet for the third time that week; rather, he gathers his crying, fussing niece in his arms with a smile that must have come with the settling down of his wandering soul as he offers to take her to the park to find moths and the legendary ice cream truck with Uncle Keith. 

For Tsukiko Shirogane, she is amazed at how a past can fade away into a present and a future that is so bizarre, a perplexing merry-go-round that literally can turn however it sees fit, could mean the end of the universe if not for a small rag-tag team of five earthlings, two Alteans, and robot lions. Were she to tell herself in the days of the Garrison or in the bedroom of her childhood home that she would be a prisoner dubbed ‘Champion’ then would be a Paladin of a great black lion, she can already see the wrinkles of laughter lines along her grinning mouth. 

It must really be fantastical, to have experienced the sights and the tastes and the sounds that she has, worldly or otherwise, but at the end of it all, the past is in the past, an exceptional array of blurring colors that will become, sadly, monochromatic while the world passes her by. Truly, it will pass by, pass while she traverses their city’s subways to a career every morning because she feels better knowing that her daughter is in the better of hands, pass while she stands in line at her favorite local cafe for a coffee, pass while she walks into her home with a box of sweets for her sweet ones. 

The door eases open, and there is a hint of spices in the air, an obvious sign that dinner is cooking away on their new— used, but it’s new to them— stove while there is a peculiar quietness that is, in a word, uncommon, the commotion of late afternoon cartoons and Disney movies entirely lacking. It catches her off guard, but nothing seems amiss; there are not pictures ripped from the walls, no broken glass or hints of a scuffle, so Shiro can at least relax her shoulders and rest her right arm as she steps into her home to find—. 

It does not take long to find a something that she longs to capture in her mind forever, longs to create as a mental keepsake (though her hands are shifting the box of baked goods from the local pastry shop to slip her phone from her pocket and snap a picture). There it is, something that is so dear in front of her, she cannot imagine being so cruel as to break the ambiance that surrounds it. 

There, lazing in the afternoon sun while the city bustles outside with the sounds of the last of rush hour, is Lance and their daughter, Esperanza, curled up on the love seat like kittens basking in the warmth of a dusky nap. 

Shiro chances just a step closer, ensuring that her phone is on silent so that the shutter noise does not dare stir her family while they cat nap the last remnants of the day away while waiting for their other loved one to come in for the night. Later, once dinner is eaten, she may show Lance the evidence of his ‘laziness,’ watch the smile tug at his lips before he leans up to kiss hers, before his hand takes her own to thread their fingers as they walk to their bedroom while little Espie sleeps soundly in her Little Mermaid bed. 

He breathes in deep, chest filling with the air while dust motes dance like a crown of fireflies about his head; the golden light of a lazing sun makes him glow, makes him nothing but radiant and the sight catches her thoughts and her heart.

She falls in love all over again.

Espie shifts, blinks awake in half masts just long enough to see her mother, to smile as the bleariness of rest sweeps her back into dream land. Shiro wonders where she’s gone, wonder if she’s on a gandola of swans or flying with the fairies of the wood to brighter glens; either way, the smile on her lips is enough to remind Shiro that the ways of her life had lead her here to this exact piece of the timeline.

After all, isn’t this worth it? Wasn’t the aches of her legs after hours of tortuous monotony in the Gladiator ring worth this? Wasn’t the escape from the clutches of a tyrannical Empire led by an iron-fisted megalomaniac hell bent on returning his own lost past worth standing there with a box of bitter yet sweet lemon bars watching tender sleeping ones while the world turns on? 

Shiro swallows, feels a tremble in her knuckles and a hummingbird beat in her heart because, yes, every moment that has passed her by, that has tried in folly to wreck her foundation, has been worth it if it means that she can come home to a husband and a daughter that loves her so terribly much. 

If anything, it makes the reflection in the glass of mirrors and picture frames seem less and less like the monster that knew only of war and of authority to hide the scars that trauma left behind. If not for the kind hand of a young man that admired her for everything that she was yet wasn’t, if not for his observation of her weaker moments, she wonders if she would be as jubilant as she is now. She wonders, in a second of nothing more than sadly pondering about what ifs, where she would be, what she would be doing instead of being there in the living room of their two bedroom home while her heart feels like a bottle filled to the brim with love letters that bobs away along the seas. 

Something gently raps along her resolve, gently takes away the locks on her knees, and draws her down to sit on the couch to gaze upon her family, no, her _home._ To name it anything less than the grandness that it is, to allow it to be called any less precious would be a sin and a detriment, and she has so many crimes staked on her pyre, so why should she add another? 

The pastel box with sweets that can wait until after dinner has been had soon sits on the coffee table while she remains perched on the couch, entranced to watch each rise and fall of Lance’s chest as he breathes in so languid and so relaxed that it steals away the beginnings of deeper laugh lines and of bags under his eyes. For a man so in tune with skin care, if seems that time will still wither him away, will still etch into his face and into his bones the truths of a mortal life. 

It would be remorseful if she did not hope for that, did not hope for the days when they are old and hobbling with canes or the like, still laughing at silly jokes and still holding hands like their younger years. 

Oh, how much a former Black Paladin fantasizes about little traipses through the park, hunched over to finally be the same shorter height as her poor husband who would still have a gleam in his eyes every chance she is within his gaze. 

For now, there is nothing more of the past with all the more to the future, but presently, there’s a matter of a lovely man that she truly believes holds a beauty no other person could ever hold a torch to, that no other person could ever claim as their own. 

He sleeps, though, sleeps while the dust motes kiss along his brunette locks before drifting away to worlds unknown to anyone but themselves. He sleeps, his child in his arms and a copy of _The Little Mermaid_ in his hand, the pages crisp and the binding worn from the times he has recited the story again and again to a little aspiring mermaid. 

However, Shiro’s stomach is starting to complain, a gurgle that squeals in the silence like a futile attempt to rouse sleeping fellows. Lance nor Espie awakens, but that’s all right; Shiro knows the cure to sleeping ‘princesses.’ 

It’s just a lean, a breath away, until her lips touch along Lance’s, a brisk touch that speaks hymnals of tenderness and of love that draws Lance up from the abysses of slumber to slowly float up until he inhales sharper, and he’s breached the surface of the waking world yet again. 

That he does not flinch reveals a trust in stormy eyes that honestly plays her heart like the strings of a harp, his fingers, long and elegant in their work, reaching up to a sky of pale skin that only yesterday knew the tension of a fight, knew the stains of a battle. 

Yesterdays, happily, are in the past, but his smile is time endless while his eyes, dreamy and blue,  ripple with the effervescence that can only be found in azures like his, and that’s just fine for a woman like Shiro, one that was too scary for boys to want to look at twice, that was more concerned with grades and physical fitness than dating, that was more scared of being a monster when Keith handed her the clothes from his father’s dresser and they were almost _too tight.  
_

Lance, in a way that can only be attributed to the ways of water, calm and serene while wrapping around the landscapes to intermingle with the lives of whomever he meets, cups her cheek. His eyes nearly overflow with the amount of _love_ that can barely be contained and Shiro desires to never move so that she will always drown in his gaze. 

It’s the words he says though, the softest of murmurs that might seem fragile, but has a resiliency that can only come from a man so in love, can only from a man that would turn the cosmos into dusty lights and hang them like lanterns upon their balcony for her enjoyment if that is what she craved beyond all else. He would sing her praises, cook and clean to her delight, if it could mean that every night when she returned to his arms, he could say so endearingly this: 

_Welcome home._


End file.
